As the Supreme Court considers a ruling on a key climate litigation case, Republicans are engaged in a protracted battle against what they allege is a network of federal, academic, and nonprofit organizations attempting to sway judges in support of thousands of climate lawsuits being brought against energy companies.
On July 19, President Donald Trump sharply criticized the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Truth Social, stating that it had “published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change” for federal judges.
Trump also threatened to defund the group, which is mostly financed by federal grants, stating: “Taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it.”
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), together with selected academics, wrote the climate-related sections of the 2025 Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which is produced by the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) for federal judges.
The center’s reference manual is provided to more than 3,000 judges, has been cited in more than 1,700 opinions, and is used as a reference and guide for judges presiding over thousands of climate lawsuits that are currently being brought by cities, counties, and states across the United States. In addition to lawsuits currently in local courts, the pivotal case of Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In addition to the climate-related sections of the manual, NASEM also produced a separate report on July 15 that supported “extreme event attribution” (EEA), the legal theory underpinning climate lawsuits, which claims that damage from extreme weather can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, as plaintiffs assert.
“The scientific tools, observational datasets, and methods developed and used for EEA have advanced considerably over the past decade and increased the confidence in EEA results for some types of weather events,” NASEM stated on July 15 regarding its report.
That report also provides a methodology and causal link between greenhouse gas emissions, changes in climate, extreme weather, physical impacts on communities, and societal and economic harm. The group stated that it had the “highest confidence” when attributing damages from extreme heat, cold, and heavy rainfall, but was less confident regarding damage from thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Allegations of Bias
Critics, however, have said the conclusions by NASEM are one-sided and based on consensus and computer modeling rather than real-life observation.
“There are many credible scientists whose voices dissent from what [NASEM] has written, so it’s really only one point of view,” Steven Koonin, physicist at Stanford University and former undersecretary for science under President Barack Obama, told The Epoch Times.
In January, attorneys general from 27 states requested that the FJC remove the information on climate science from its manual, charging, among other things, bias on the part of co-authors who attorneys general say have advocated for climate lawsuits as a tool to fight global warming. Two of them are also co-authors of a 2021 report on “The Law and Science of Climate Change Attribution,” which includes a chapter titled “How Might Judges and Litigants Utilize Attribution Science in the Courtroom?” providing a framework for using weather event attribution in lawsuits.
The attorneys general also charged that the manual ignored contradictory viewpoints including the Department of Energy’s recent report on climate change, and that “the authors race to embrace a controversial study that ties specific harms to emissions … which would in turn support the most substantial findings of liability for climate-driven plaintiffs.”
Flue-gas stacks of a coal-fired power plant are seen from the Valley Village neighborhood in Louisville, Ky., on Feb. 14, 2026. Jon Cherry/Getty Images
The Scientific Method
Many scientists accept that the Earth is in a warming period and that human activity is increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which likely has a warming effect, Koonin said, but how this affects specific weather patterns and the extent to which weather events can be attributed to emissions remains in dispute.
“They [the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine] say that these attribution studies have more prominence in the press and in legal proceeding and they say attribution methodology is getting better, but saying something is getting better is nowhere near the same as saying it’s any good,” Koonin said. “You would expect to see graphs throughout the report comparing the results of attribution with what the actual data is, and there is virtually none of that in the report.”
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine also produced a chapter explaining the scientific method for judges, but the method the group advocates is largely based on computer modeling and so-called consensus rather than scientific observation, Koonin said.
In response to the request from the attorneys general, the FJC removed the section on climate science from the manual but kept the chapter on the scientific method. NASEM kept the climate science section as written on its website.
The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has launched its own investigation into the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, charging in a July 16 letter that the organization was wrongfully withholding information on how it had spent federal funds in its climate reporting.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times. A spokesperson from the organization said in a statement to media outlets that its mission was “to provide independent, objective scientific advice.”
O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, told The Epoch Times he was critical of the National Academy of Sciences for its climate reference manual.
He accused the academy of cozying up with lawyers and “playing games with our legal system to accomplish their policy and other self-interested goals.”
An Expanding Investigation
Conservatives say that the effort to influence judges extends beyond the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The House Judiciary Committee has broadened its investigation to include other federal agencies, nonprofits and legal groups.
Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Subcommittee on Courts Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged in a Jan. 14 letter that the Federal Judicial Center may be producing “biased programming” with the “underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs who allege injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products.”
Jordan and Issa further alleged that the FJC may have coordinated with the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), an activist legal firm, and its affiliate, the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), in producing training materials for judges.
In an April 28 letter, Jordan and Issa charged that ELI was withholding information about the content of the training materials, that it had not been forthcoming about training expenses paid to judges, and that ELI had received funding from the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit which the letter alleged has also provided “firms involved in climate change litigation” with “significant amounts of funding.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 4, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times
ELI refuted these allegations, stating that its role is providing scientific information to judges, that it does not coordinate with parties involved in litigation, and that it is cooperating with the House request.
“ELI has worked diligently to cooperate with the Committee’s investigation and provide information that dispels any misunderstandings about the Climate Judiciary Project,” ELI spokesperson Nick Collins told The Epoch Times.
“The goal of CJP is to provide judges with the tools they need to understand climate science and how it arises in the law, and our programs are no different than other judicial education programs providing training on legal and scientific topics that judges voluntarily choose to attend.”
On April 28, the House Judiciary Committee issued a letter to the law firm Sher Edling, stating that “evidence has emerged that raises questions about whether ELI, CJP, or one of its affiliates have coordinated with your law firm, Sher Edling LLP, on climate-related litigation, lectures for judges, or other activities aimed at predisposing judges to side with plaintiffs in climate-related cases.”
Sher Edling responded to the House letter in May, stating: “There is nothing extraordinary, and certainly nothing nefarious, about Sher Edling’s touchpoints with ELI, which are minimal,” and that “the personnel and funding overlap between ELI and Sher Edling pales in relation to the overwhelming, longstanding, and ongoing connections between ELI and the fossil fuel defendants.”
Proponents of climate lawsuits say that, with the failure of Congress to pass the Green New Deal and the Trump administration rolling back regulatory enforcement of CO2 emissions, the courts are one of the few remaining options to restrict the burning of fossil fuels. Critics, however, warn that American consumers will suffer if the suits succeed. One lawsuit alone, in Multnomah County, Oregon, is seeking $50 billion from Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and others.
“Our society is entirely dependent on oil and gas,” Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told The Epoch Times.
“There is no evidence that [climate lawsuits] are going to improve the weather, climate or environment in the slightest, and so all they’re doing is raising costs with the goal of eliminating something that society can’t do without,” Milloy said. “If they were to prevail, the results would be catastrophic.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the Federal Judicial Center for comment but did not receive a response as of publication time.
